Yesterday, I posted a Listserv comment from a Bloomingdale resident who had a recurring problem with human shit appearing in front of his or her garage. The comment inspired a flurry of Listserv activity from other Bloomingdale residents regaling the neighborhood with their own human shit tales—-and offering up potential remedies. These are their stories:

Witness: A resident who “thought I was the only one experiencing alley craps (that what I call it). Alley craps is where someone ducks into the alley and craps in front of a garage or fence.”

Testimony: “I’ve never had a need to take an alley crap and I can’t, for the life of me, understand or appreciate how desperate one must be to squat down and do such a thing. Do alley crappers believe there is a magical cleaning service for the alley? Often I spray it away with a hose—-I’m not touching it at all (because I don’t know what kind of muckety muck is in the crap from them). Meningitis is not my thing, girlfriend…”

Remedy: “I try to keep it clean in the alley behind my house so to put the alley crapper on notice that the area is not unkempt. I was thinking about a camera—-but what’s that going to do? I don’t want to see, meet, hear, or have recorded history of the alley crappers.”

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Witness: “a Florida Avenue NW resident, unit block, south side.”

Testimony: “We had an acrobatic defecator who managed to do it several feet up on the side of our house. How that was accomplished has long been the subject of our imagination. It’s something that’s done quietly so it is difficult to detect when happening.”

Remedy: “I once saw a woman pull her pants down and urinate in the alley in broad daylight. I yelled at her, but she only smiled and seemed to enjoy my attention.”

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Witness: “a resident on the 100 block of T Street NW”

Testimony: “We have seen large poops in the middle of the alley several times while taking our dogs out. To our knowledge, no one else walks their dogs down that part of the alley and (1) we’d never our dogs poop there and (2) yes there is sometimes tissue nearby. We have seen several bums peeing in the alley, using the insets of a house on Thomas (whose side faces the alley) as their own personal urinal.”

Remedy: “Trying to talk to these gentleman has been futile.”